A Central Indiana middle school said Monday that its canceled plans to have students participate in a "Slave Ship" history exercise after a public outcry.

The exercise was designed to reenact the Middle Passage, in which millions of Africans were kidnapped, shipped across the Atlantic in horrifying conditions and sold into slavery in the Americas.

“In order to help students better understand the hardship captives encountered, “Slave Ship” was created to be an uncomfortable experience,” said a letter sent home to parents ahead of the planned class activity.

It also warned that students would have their wrists “loosely bound” by cable ties, could be asked to kneel or lie on the ground and would hear “threats and language typical of the hateful attitudes representative of the time period.” They would not hear the “N-word,” the letter said.

Kevin Pax, an eighth-grade social studies teacher at Western Middle School in Howard County, has been doing the “Slave Ship” activity with students for several years. The school is located about an hour north of Indianapolis.

This year, though, the letter that went out ahead of the activity caused an uproar of concerned parents who posted about it on social media and contacted the school.

"There are different ways to go about teaching history," said Tawayi Wilson, a Kokomo resident who was planning to send her daughter to Western Schools next year. She says she's reconsidering now.

"There is no reason why we should have to reenact slavery," Wilson said, "something so harsh, so emotional for children to try and understand."

The role play portion of the lesson was canceled, according to Western Schools Superintendent Randy McCracken.

McCracken said Pax had been doing the activity for the last six or seven years without issue.

Well, I heard the slave ship reenactment was not the school's best work, anyway -- their "The Holocaust Reimagined" choir show during Oktoberfest and end of the school year play, "Vegas Mass Shooting: The Musical" are much harder tickets to get....

Now that millennials have reportedly knocked off napkins, doorbells, and diamonds, beer looks to be the next victim on their hit list.

This is no joke. Millennials are drinking staggering amounts of hard seltzer instead of beer. In the most recent reported sales figures, White Claw and Truly outsold every craft beer brand put together. In July, White Claw claims it outsold Budweiser. Yes, Budweiser.

The category has been growing at a triple-digit annual rate since 2016, and is expected to grow by about 300 percent in 2019. Amazingly, even that number is limited to some extent by production capacity. In other words, if there was more White Claw available, people would buy it.

This is no passing fad, either. According to Sanjiv Gajiwala, senior vice president of marketing for Mark Anthony Brands, which owns White Claw and the Mike’s Hard line, after someone has purchased a can of their hard seltzer, “one in three people will buy it again. That’s pretty good.” Even with their impressive sales, he maintains there’s actually room for the brand to grow. While nearly every liquor store and supermarket carries White Claw, only 20 percent of bars and restaurants are currently selling it.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I had never heard of White Claw until this article. I remember a millennial age in-law drinking Truly at a recent family get together.

I have three millennial age sons (well, the oldest might be a 'tweener, as he is 30). They and their male friends of the same age appear to mainly drink beer. (Sometimes lots of it.)

If they have a little cash in their pockets, they drink fancy micro-brewery beers; if funds are low, they drink mega-brewery beers. If someone took the last beer and the game's not over yet, they'll sometimes stoop to drinking whatever fruity alcohol concoction their wife/girlfriend brought.

In the last year or so, I have seen their respective female spouses/girlfriends (who are also millennials) occasionally drink a White Claw instead of Miller Lite or comparable swill. I've never had White Claw, but that strikes me as a good decision.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

So this happened today. The first image is from an email I received this afternoon. The 2nd image is the actual ad the person had the question about. 😳🤷🏼‍♂️🤦‍♂️

I suppose that's relative.

We recently did an escape room. One of the clues was using the Pathagorean Theorem, we needed the length of a line on the way from the ceiling to the floor on the opposite side of the room. I deduced that the room was 9' tall and we found the length of the wall in another clue. The combination of a lock was C²-10,000. We ended up having to get a clue, because it wouldn't work. We asked what the height of the room was and they said 9'. I explained that we had done it repeatedly using 108² and the combo didn't work. She said in a rather condescending tone, sir, 9'=106". I'm like I'll take you're 106, but I'm the wrong dude to argue measurements with, I'm the guy who eyeballed this thing and correctly identified it was 9' tall.

So @Irishman, given the information you just read, what do you reckon the odds of you getting a measurement on Friday night are? :)